Quick start guide

This guide takes you from a fresh Templ account to a live WordPress site. Each step links to a detailed article if you want the full walkthrough.

Before you start

You'll need a Templ account. Start a free trial if you don't have one yet - no credit card required.

1. Get a WordPress site onto Templ

You have two ways to get started, depending on whether you're building something new or moving an existing site.

Starting fresh? Create a new WordPress site from the Templ Panel. Give it a name, pick a hosting location close to your visitors, and Templ provisions the environment and installs WordPress for you.

See Create a new website.

Already have a site elsewhere? Migrate it to Templ. We offer a free migration service - request it in the Panel and we'll move your site for you. Prefer to do it yourself? Use our import tool or the Migrate Guru plugin, or move larger and more complex sites manually over SFTP and/or SSH.

See Migrate to Templ for all the options and which one to pick.

2. Explore your site

From your website's details page in the Panel, use the Home page button to view the site and the WP Admin button to reach the WordPress dashboard.

From here you can start building. A few things worth setting up early:

  • Access your files over SFTP or SSH, or through the Templ file manager.
  • Create a staging website to test bigger changes safely before pushing them live.
  • Take a backup before making significant changes.

3. Connect your domain

Point your own domain at your Templ site. If you registered your domain elsewhere, you'll update its nameservers or DNS records once; if you register through Templ, this is handled for you.

SSL certificates are issued automatically once your domain resolves to Templ.

4. Set up email

Your Templ-hosted site can send email out of the box - our servers provide a preconfigured SMTP service, so transactional emails (order confirmations, password resets, and so on) work with no setup from you.

Templ doesn't host full mailboxes, but we can forward incoming email to an address of your choice, and you can pair this with a service like Gmail to send and receive from your own domain.

See the Email guide to set this up.

What's next

  • Performance - how caching, the CDN, and the Templ Optimizer keep your site fast
  • Backups - create, download, and restore backups
  • SFTP & SSH - access your files directly
  • Billing - how billing works and how to manage your plan

Need help?Contact support, or see Support & Troubleshooting.